St Roch’s Wake

St Roch, or Rock, a pilgrim from Montpellier who nursed the sick in a time of plague and was fed in the forest by a hound that carried him bread from its master’s table, was invoked against pestilence, and his feast fell on the morrow of the Assumption. Hone and Chambers both say his day was kept in England like a wake or general harvest home, and Hone adds dances in the churchyard in the evening. The churchwardens of St Michael, Spurriergate, in York paid ninepence in 1518 for the writing of St Royke’s mass. Hone thought the phrase sound as a roach might come from the saint’s legend.